10 must-read E-Books for B2B Marketers (& they’re all free!)

Written by , 19 September 2012  |  Tagged under EBooks B2B Marketing B2B SEO Blogging Lead Nurturing Lead Scoring

To be successful in B2B today you really need to step up your game. The plethora of digital channels now at your disposal translates into a challenging learning curve, even if you’ve got years of experience under your belt.

Luckily the content marketing explosion of the past few years has generated tons of material to help you educate yourself. But that also means more noise. With the staggering amount of content available, where do you spend your valuable time most effectively?

This list will guide you to the content gems that are worth your time. I’ve built it while reading up on digital B2B marketing over the past years and it contains only deep, actionable long-form content. Enjoy!

The best SEO E-Book

SEOMoz – The Beginner’s Guide to SEO

What is it about?
If there is one traffic technique you need to master in B2B, SEO is it. Getting found primarily requires skill, not budget. The SEOMoz guide covers all the basics and many advanced topics on top.

Content Marketing 101

exploreB2B – The Social Media Way of Life

What is it about?
Content was King, became currency and is now moving towards commodity. Still content plays a crucial role in getting traffic and converting visitors into customers. This intro E-Book covers Content Marketing 101.

Email Marketing Basics

Mailchimp – Email Marketing Field Guide

What is it about?
Email is quite simply the most effective paid B2B tactic. Master it and you will have a guaranteed high-volume lead source. The Mailchimp guide is a great introduction to doing Email well.

Guide to Landingpage Optimization

Hubspot – Optimizing Landingpages for Lead Generation and Conversion

What is it about?
High-converting landingpages are the silver bullet for B2B ROI. This Hubspot E-Book walks you through the most important factors for increasing landingpage conversion rates. If you need more ideas I recommend you also read my earlier post ‘51 A/B test ideas for improving your landingpage conversion rates’.

The Psychology behind Conversion

Gregory Ciotti – Conversion Psychology

What is it about?
Gregory examines conversion from a different angle: Psychology. His excellent E-Book reveals the psychological mechanisms that lead people to convert (or not). Highly recommended reading!

Detailed E-Book on Lead Nurturing

Marketo – Defintive Guide to Lead Nurturing

What is it about?
The E-Books listed above mainly talk about driving top-of-the-funnel traffic. This Marketo workbook can be used as a blueprint for moving prospects down the funnel and towards the sale. It shows you how you can employ automated email follow-ups to get prospects to take the next action.

Lead Scoring Workbook

Marketo – Defintive Guide to Lead Scoring

What is it about?
So far we’ve been standing firmly on marketing ground. Lead scoring now takes us towards and across the lead handover to Sales. The workbook will help you define and implement a meaningful lead scoring to increase sales productivity and reduce wastage of leads.

Corporate Blogging

Contently – Beginner’s Guide to Blogging

What is it about?
The title really says it all. If you want to start a blog Contently have you covered. The content is geared towards corporate blogs, but also features lots of generally useful info. Blogs greatly help with SEO and are one of the cornerstones of any content marketing strategy. Time to get serious about blogging for business!

Webinars & Public Speaking

Roger Courville – The Virtual Presenter’s Handbook

What is it about?
Webinars are fantastic content assets. They’re relatively easy to produce leads generated from them are generally of high quality. The caveat: You need to find a decent speaker or become one yourself. This 100+ page E-Book covers everything from presentation design and delivery to planning and technology. I highly recommend you add webinars to your mix! (Disclosure: I am a Citrix employee and the Citrix product GoToMeeting is the sponsor of this E-Book). You might also want to take a look at my own whitepaper on the topic: 'How to improve your Public Speaking Skills'.

Getting started with Twitter

Hubspot – How to attract customers with Twitter

What is it about?
With everything else accounted for, where does social media come into play? This Hubspot E-Book goes into great detail about how to leverage Twitter – the social media channel best suited for B2B.

What are your favorite B2B Marketing E-Books?

Any good, free B2B E-Books you came across lately? Please share them in the comments below!

About the Author

I’m a B2B marketer with a bit of a crush on digital marketing and an intense interest in content strategy and creation. I own and run this blog and the whitepaper download portal attached to it.

Currently I spend too much time watching the Google Analytics flatline that is this websites visitor graph. Consequently if you like this post I’d be super-excited if you would stumble it or share it on Twitter. I’d also be happy to continue the conversation elsewhere. Come seek me out on Google+, LinkedIn or Twitter (@WhitepaperDepot)!

PS: I also head up the Demand Generation team of Citrix’ Online Services Division in Europe, but this blog is based on my own personal experience and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of the company.


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Welcome. Glad you're here!

I'm a B2B marketer with a bit of a crush on digital channels.

On this blog I talk about how Marketers can use actionable B2B content to drive more leads and revenue.

I hope you'll enjoy reading. If you do, please get in touch. I'd be happy to hear from you.

Daniel

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